Family Recipes: Crowd Pleasing Cobbler

I have been making this cobbler recipe for as long as I can remember. It has all the qualities that I love in a recipe: easy, quick, and standard ingredients that come together to make a simple yet simply awesome dish. This cobbler is a go-to dessert in my family and hopefully it will be one in yours too.

My mom refers to this recipe as "Blueberry Stuff", but as you can see I used peaches when I took the pictures. Peaches and blueberries together are also delicious. The combination of the fresh-out-of-the-oven cobbler and the cold ice-cream melting on top is totally heavenly.

"Blueberry Stuff"

Original Recipe from Southern Living Magazine

Adapted by the Maurers

4 cups of blueberries, peaches (sliced), or a combination of the two (4 cups = 2 pints of blueberries)

about 1T lemon juice for sprinkling

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

3T melted butter

vanilla ice-cream

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In a 13x9 inch baking dish*, arrange the fruit and sprinkle with lemon juice.

3. In a food processor, combine egg, flour and sugar. Blend until the mixture is course and resembles corn meal.

4. Sprinkle the mixture over the fruit.

5. Bake for 30 min. or until the crust is starting to brown and the fruit is bubbly.

6. Serve while still hot topped with vanilla ice-cream.

*the dish in the picture is smaller because I wanted to try it crustier, but I think I like with less crust better because you can taste the fruit more, but you can do it either way if you like more crust.

Toss the crust ingredients in the food processor...

...it should look like this...

....the fruit...

...top with the crust...

...butter makes everything better!

Golden brown, yum!

Vanilla ice-cream is a must!

Susie's Shortcake

The best part about this recipe is the simplicity to happiness ratio. I know shortcake makes me really happy, but it has a special place for Phil because his mom used to make it. Then, she hand wrote the recipe with love and now I'm making it for him an taking all the credit, mwahaha! No, just kidding, the credit definitely goes to Susie. This shortcake proves that the best food is simple and from the heart. Awww, let's all hug like its the end of an episode of Full House.

Susie's Shortcake

Adapted by Amanda

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder Fun fact: BP is what makes it shortCAKE and not shortBREAD, thanks Wikipedia!

1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup sugar

5 tablespoons oil

2 tablespoons melted butter

3/4 cup milk

1. Mix together all the ingredients. First time I made it I just dumped the hot butter into the cold milk and the butter got all clumpy, but the cake turned out fine. Second time I made it I slowly added the hot butter to the milk, no clumps this time, but I don't think it made a difference in the final product, so dump away!

2. Pour into a greased pan. I used 9in round metal pan and Phil says Susie does too, you could use a loaf pan.

3. Bake 12-15min at 425.

Serving suggestions:

-Strawberry shortcake- serve up a piece of cake with sliced strawberries and cool whip, or real whip cream if you are feeling fancy. You could even try different kinds of fruit, I bet peaches would be awesome.

-Shortcake and Milk (Phil's favorite)- Put a piece shortcake in a bowl, add some sliced strawberries, pour on some cold milk. Great for breakfast.

Susie's handwritten recipe, with Phil and Amanda's shopping list for burgers on the right. If you were thinking smoked mozzarella and bacon don't go well with shortbread, you are right.

The ingredients- I bet you have all this stuff in your pantry. What are we waiting for? Start cooking!

So easy- ingredients in the bowl...

...mix...

...put in the greased pan...

...bake...

...and serve!

C is for Cookies

I'm watching Good Eats and Alton Brown just said "The recipe on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip package is the Magna Carta of chocolate chip cookie recipes."

I couldn't agree more. My grandma makes the best chocolate chip cookies on earth (real original I know, but true!). We always rave about them, but she insists she just follows the Nestle recipe. Curious, I took a shot at the recipe myself. While my cookies were pretty close to Grandma Nancy's, I still think hers are a little better. What's her secret? Somehow she can bake in the love (awww).

Hot Lava? Hot CHOCOLATE Lava!

I was watching a Food Network special (shocking, I know) about Thanksgiving desserts and noticed a serious lack of chocolate! Today also happens to be my mom's birthday so what better excuse to make something chocolatey.

These Chocolate Lava Cakes look and taste amazing, but they are surprisingly easy to make! I only wanted to make 3 cakes, and allrecipes.com made that super easy. Just type in how many servings you want and it will recalculate the amounts for you.